Pentax Q7 Image Gallery

The Pentax Q7 is a cute, portable, incredibly petite interchangeable lens camera. It has a small 1/1.7 inch sensor (albeit bigger than the Q10) for an ILC, but is packed with some pretty fun features like 21 scene modes and 5 image color options. That being said, the Q7 is more than just a toy camera with fun features. It also has the ability to shoot RAW images and has pixel mapping–a useful feature that “cleans up” dead pixels without having to send it back to the manufacturer.

We received the Q7 and immediately headed outside to snap a few images. The lighting outside was great. The skies had cleared after a quick rain and the colors of my subjects were deep and saturated. It was the perfect time to play around with the Q7 and get my initial impression of the camera.

I wish I could say I loved this camera. Heck, I wish I could say I really liked it. But after about 20 minutes of shooting with the Q7 I am having a hard time seeing the benefits of owning it. Below are some sample images I took as soon as I received it. The image quality lacks sharpness and the camera’s sensor produces more grain than I expected. I was disappointed. Although the Q7 has a lower initial price point than the Q10, I still can’t see spending $500 on this set-up.

But my personality is one that wants to find the good (as well as the bad) in any camera I review. So here it goes…if you throw on the Pentax lens adaptor with a 200mm f/2.8 lens, you got yourself one heck of a telephoto camera–over 800 millimeters of it. Seriously! The 1/1.7 inch sensor has a crop factor of 4.2 times making this camera a hot commodity if you are in the market for an inexpensive extreme telephoto camera/lens combo. We haven’t had the opportunity to try it out yet, but we would love to hear from you if you have used a Pentax Q for extreme telephoto photography.